I fell into writing about health shortly after grad school, where I realized I didn't want to work in a lab for the rest of my life! My areas of interest are the brain and behavior, as well as what influences the decisions we make about our health, and how the media helps and hinders people's understanding of health issues. As an undergraduate, I studied English Literature and Biopsychology at Vassar College, and got my PhD in Biopsychology and Behavioral Neuroscience at CUNY's Graduate Center in New York City, where I grew up and live now. My day job is as Associate Editor with the health website, TheDoctorWillSeeYouNow.com. My work has appeared in several other publications, including TheAtlantic.com and YogaGlo.com, and I'm particularly excited to join the Forbes health team. Email me at alicegwalton [at] gmail [dot] com .

Eat, Smoke, Meditate: Why Your Brain Cares How You Cope

Most people do what they have to do to get through the day. Though this may sound dire, let’s face it, it’s the human condition. Given the number of people who are depressed or anxious, it’s not surprising that big pharma is doing as well as it is. But for millennia before we turned to government-approved drugs, humans devised clever ways of coping: Taking a walk, eating psychedelic mushrooms, breathing deeply, snorting things, praying, running, smoking, and meditating are just some of the inventive ways humans have found to deal with the unhappy rovings of their minds.

But which methods actually work?

Most people would agree that a lot of our unhappiness comes from the mind’s annoying chatter, which includes obsessions, worries, drifts from this stress to that stress, and our compulsive and exhausting need to anticipate the future. Not surprisingly, the goal of most adults is to get the mind to shut up, calm down, and chill out. For this reason, we turn to our diverse array of feel-good tools (cigarettes, deep breathing, and what have you). Some are healthier and more effective than others, and researchers are finally understanding why certain methods break the cycle and others exacerbate it.

Last year, a Harvard study confirmed that there’s a clear connection between mind wandering and unhappiness. Not only did the study find that if you’re awake, your mind is wandering almost half the time, it also found that this wandering is linked to a less happy state. (You can actually use the iPhone app used in the study to track your own happiness.) This is not surprising, since when your mind is wandering, it’s not generally to the sweet things in your life: More likely, it’s to thoughts like why your electric bill was so high, why your boss was rude to you today, or why your ex-husband is being so difficult.

Another study found that mind wandering is linked to activation of network of brain cells called the default mode network (DMN), which is active not when we’re doing high-level processing, but when we’re drifting about in “self-referential” thoughts (read: when our brain is flitting from one life-worry to the next).

Meditation is an interesting method for increasing one’s sense of happiness because not only has it stood the test of time, but it’s also been tested quite extensively in the lab. Part of the effect of mindfulness meditation is to quiet the mind by acknowledging non-judgmentally and then relinquishing (rather than obsessing about) unhappy or stress-inducing thoughts.

New research by Judson Brewer, MD, PhD and his group at Yale University has found that experienced meditators not only report less mind wandering during meditation, but actually have markedly decreased activity in their DMN. Earlier research had shown that meditators have less activity in regions governing thoughts about the self, like the medial prefrontal cortex: Brewer says that what’s likely going on in experienced meditators is that these “‘me’ centers of the brain are being deactivated.”

They also found that when the brain’s “me” centers were activated, meditators also co-activated areas important in self-monitoring and cognitive control, which may indicate that they are on the constant lookout for “me” thoughts or mind-wandering – and when their minds do wander, they bring them back to the present moment. Even better, meditators not only did this during meditation, but when not being told to do anything in particular. This suggests that they may have formed a new default mode: one that is more present-centered (and less “me”-centered), no matter what they are doing.

“This is really cool,” Brewer says. “As far as we know, nobody has seen this type of connectivity pattern before. These networks have previously been shown to be anti-correlated.”

So is being happy all about shifting our tendency away from focus on ourselves? Research in other areas, like neurotheology (literally the neurology of religion), suggests that there may be something to this. Andy Newberg, MD at the University of Pennsylvania has found that both in meditating monks and in praying nuns, areas of the brain important in concentration and attention were activated, while areas that govern how a person relates to the external world were deactivated. These findings may suggest that for people who practice meditation or prayer, the focus becomes less on the self as a distinct entity from the external world, and more on connection between the two. This reflects the idea discussed earlier where shifting attention from inside to outside is at least part of what quells unhappiness.

What about using other tools like cigarettes, food, or alcohol, as a method for finding pleasure and calming the mind? Don’t these things take a person outside of him or herself, and move the focus from the inner world of stressful thoughts to something outside, or “other”? Looking forward to the next hit of caffeine, nicotine, or coke might seem like a valid method of moving attention from the inside to the outside, but if you look closer, it actually intensifies the unpleasantness.

Brewer uses the example of smoking to illustrate why addiction fuels negative thoughts rather than abates them. In addition to the pleasurable associations, smoking actually creates a negative feedback loop, where you are linking stress and craving with the oh-so-good act of smoking. So whenever you experience a negative emotion, craving returns and intensifies over time, so that you are actually even less happy than before. A cigarette may quiet the mind temporarily – during the act of smoking – but in between cigarettes is where things get bad, because craving creeps in. Though we’re using craving as the example, unhappiness, self-referential thoughts, or everyday worries can all be substituted in.

Substituting a carrot stick or other behavior for your actual craving (or other form of unhappiness) is a typical method of treatment, but it doesn’t often work, says Brewer, because the feedback loop is still there. Addressing the process itself with other methods (like meditation), which allow you to ride out the craving/unhappiness by attending to it and accepting it, and then letting it go, has been more successful, because it actually breaks the cycle rather than masks it.

So if you’re dealing with unhappiness of any kind, whether it’s every day worries, or more severe depression or anxiety, the method you choose for coping matters. Finding one that solves the problem – breaking the cycle, rather than masking it – is crucial.

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And mindfulness is being shown to be quite a good (if not better, in some cases) alternative to CBT. Great research is being done to show how these old, old practices are actually working in the brain and on behavior. Very cool area. Thanks for the comment.

I have to say first, that I was a might bit surprised to see such an article posted on Forbes. However, maybe this is my flaw in judgment and serves to teach me that I must always seek to go outside of my own socio-politico realm and consider news from a source that is not necessarily on the top of my inherent media resources list. Anyway to get to the point of the matter, I really enjoyed this article. There is certainly something to be said for practicing mindfulness, even if attempts are repeated and failed. That’s not to celebrate the blase attitude one might cultivate if too often in the habit of forgiving themselves willy-nilly and then throwing to the wayside the full meaning behind a life structured upon a regular, deep route of genuine meditation. But even if very primative in its practice, highlighting one’s own awareness to the very moment they are privy to is imperative. Why? Ultimately it is because bringing oneself into the moment they exist in illuminates the flaws in being future minded, worried or concerned or anxious over issues that have even YET to arrive. They are but mere nightmarish versions of our imagination. What is the point in that? It only serves to focus largely on negativities. It takes away from our ability to function presently, as we dwell in the realms of hope and fear instead of participating in the decision making process that determines our here and now – which! ultimately, brings to fruition the solutions to our hopes or the resolution of our fears. I think it is part of our societal nature to dwell on the negative and as a result we relate deeply and pervasively to it..and this process bleeds over into nearly every avenue of our lives. Consider: How often do we celebrate our wins, or more importantly, how longly or deeply do we invest ourselves into contemplating our successes, the happiness or freedom it has wrought in our lives in comparison to the amount of time we spend in a state akin to or exactly like ‘clincial depression’. Note: there isn’t many a case labeled ‘clinical happiness!’ but in all reality, the potentiality for either condition is equal, really. We can turn to any number of substances, situations or patterns of behavior to somehow coddle our consciousness, but I believe as Ms. Walton points out with this article in entirety, there are truly few other solutions to ending our individual sufferings outside of the method of mindfulness practicion. It seems rather ironic to me that those of the quintessential “Western” mentality would fit rather well into the initial stages of Buddhist tradition: the hinayana path or the path which promotes self-liberation before ones inborn impetus for the liberation of other’s as the foundation for one’s spiritual practice. Quite crassly, implying that individuals are in it for themselves first so that they can better relate to and share compassion with the rest of their world and potentially beyond. It does not operate as “do for others first and then i follow, but i do for myself first and the rest follow” – I realize this is a rather curuddy explnation, but it should suffice for these purposes. I mean that’s really the missing link between the analytical, intellectual side of society and the more impulsive and unquestioning side of it. The ability to realize in a moment’s notice that YOUR happiness, your contement is DIRECTLY tied into the contement or ease of suffering others experience. Even moments of deep introspection, when played out –even barely! – amongst a single intimately known individual or in a more public sort of scenario, ultimately, these actions while spent in the moments of great future think/hope/fear will generate some sort of reaction, for good or worse, in another. How many times have you engaged or disengaged with a surly waiter or pleasant /helpful sales clerk? To realize this, that our state of mind directly competes or more correctly, interacts with our ability to effect others and resultingly, strengthen or less THEIR suffering, i.e. utopia vs dystopia.

I believe, very deeply, that you have to be of a meditative mind to evolve into a more well-balanced person to even BEGIN to practice true mindfulness or actual meditation. Present mindedness: It’s an incredibly difficult task to assume yet when the results so immediately gratifying: when one is engaged in a manner which does not require frivolous kowtowing to the fragile ego, it frees up the parts of the brain that might normally beg for validation, negatively namely, and all for the mere sake of claiming their presence. Anyway, kudos to you Ms. Walton. I look forward to pieces similar to this in the future. The Roundtable: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Roundtable/147042072051914

Much of human suffering is derived from impulsive, short-term thinking and its resultant behaviours. Living in a Western country is the worst place to be if you are an impulsive person, and many Western people have impulsive tendencies, for obvious reasons. Those tendencies can lead to broken relationships, unemployment, addictions, social isolation and a general state of depression and anxiety, which even multiple antidepressants won’t help. Controlling the impulsive mind is the key to peace of mind, but it’s an uphill battle if you live in North America.

To truly combat depression and anxiety on a global scale, we need to rethink our societies and the individual’s purpose in that society. Or we need to design a stronger, more resilient brain to cope with the flood of information and stimuli in our environment.

Meditation might keep you going if you’re strong enough, but sometimes self-destruction feels like the more appropriate way to deal with the world we live in.

Thanks Alice !, for this wonderful write up. This is the most scientific article I ever read regarding brain behaviour for breaking up chain of negative thoughts. The research mentioned definitely helps in proving the point instead of just mentioning big philosophical but boils down to nothing points that normally other authors do when they advocate meditation or something else

Thank you for the comment. I think it’s so important to include the hard science behind it, so we know we’re talking about real, verifiable phenomena, not just philosophy or fluff. And this area certainly has the scientific backing, which makes it so intriguing.

thank you so much for this article. I’ve been coping with a 12 year old daughter with developmental delay compounded by autism. Recently as the past two weeks she claims to be hearing voices and seeing apparitions. However she’s just started a new school with more demands. She had voluntarily quit taking her medication for a month and was lying to me she took it. I spoke with her last night about what is reality and imaginary. I told her only she can make the decision to get well, to turn her mind onto happy thoughts, or pick a specific mental image in mind, that of a foggy forest. Something soothing and calming — a form of meditation. I advised her to busy her hands with beading necklaces to turn her mind from negativity. This article is well timed, I have an appointment with psychiatrist this afternoon for her. I’ll give the Doctor the link to this page.

Wonderful article. I find that adding half smiling while I am doing unpleasant tasks that I once would have found anxiety producing or tensing and taking 1 minute meditation breaks, where I stop and follow the breath for 3 breaths, still half smiling, is very beneficial. A practice of smiling with a practice of meditation is very beneficial. http://mindfulnesswalks.wordpress.com